Don't Let Google Huff and Puff and Blow You&nbspAway

This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

We're all familiar with the story of the three little pigs. One builds his house out of straw, another builds his house out of sticks and the other builds his house out of bricks. Along comes the big bad wolf who huffs and puffs and blows down the straw house. The house of sticks meets the same fate. But in spite of his huffing and puffing, the big bad wolf is unable to collapse the house made of bricks.

But a lesser known tale is that of the three little webmasters. The first little webmaster built his website with stuffed keywords, duplicate articles, spun text and a host of other on-site mischief. But along came the big bad panda who huffed and puffed and blew that website right out of Google's search results.

So the second little webmaster built his website with original content and went out and created thousands of bookmarks, submitted his site to thousands of free SEO directories, spun thousands of articles and made a resource page with a link exchange program. But along came the big bad penguin who huffed and puffed and blew that website right out of Google's search results.

The third little webmaster, seeing the fate of his comrades, decided he needed to make his website immune to the huffing and puffing of any rogue pandas, penguins or other black and white trouble makers that might be lurking about. How did he do it? He followed the advice of the zookeeper who let those foul creatures into the public in the first place.

Webmaster Guidelines

Unless you started learning SEO yesterday, you've probably read and reread Google's Webmaster Guidelines. I don't think I need to go in depth on these guidelines. If you don't know them, stop reading right now and go read them. It will contribute a lot more to your SEO knowledge than silly pig analogies.

Now as SEO practitioners, we tend to focus on the obvious things in the guidelines, like including a sitemap, checking page load times, using a robots.txt file and all of that good stuff. But in my recent rereading of the guidelines, I found something that others have touched on in the past but that I consider to be profound. Under the quality guidelines section, Google asks this question:

"Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

I can tell you this much- if search engines didn't exist, neither would about 80% of the Internet. Now ask yourself this question: if search engines didn't exist, would 80% of your links? Would 80% of your content?

This might sound a little crazy, but the best SEO you can do right now is no SEO. Yes, follow the guidelines previously mentioned. I would consider this search engine compliance more than I would search engine optimization. But don't go around the Internet looking for any and every opportunity to do something that is going to increase your search engine rankings.

Get Traffic Like Search Engines Don't Exist

This is something Rand has talked about for quite some time. This is why he started Inbound.org and shares information about inbound marketing like this. I can't stress enough how important this information is. By focusing on other traffic sources and ignoring search engines, you'll find search engines won't be able to ignore you.

With that in mind, I'd like to share a few things I have done as if search engines didn't exist. Hopefully these real life examples can be beneficial to you.

Wikipedia

Anyone can become a Wikipedia editor. I'll admit, learning their editing software is very, very tricky. But it can be done, and it is well worth it. You've probably noticed while reading articles in Wikipedia that some will have this little guy:

What this is really saying is, "I am a golden opportunity!" Here's what you do. Go to Google and perform this search:

site:en.wikipedia.org "this section requires expansion" + keyword

Your keyword can be treadmill, bicycle, shoes, whatever. You will then see every Wikipedia entry with that word that has a section requiring expansion. You then see what it is they need more info about. Go over to your website and put together a comprehensive article covering that topic.

Now become a Wikipedia editor and edit the entry that needed help. Fill it out with your new knowledge you just acquired from creating an article and cite your article as a source. I've gotten at least 2 visitors each day from that citation link. You can too.

Blog Comments

No, your name is not "cash advance payday loan 24 hours" and you're not commenting on blogs no one reads. Here's what you do. Find a blog related to your niche that people actually read. Find the most recent post you can that doesn't have very many comments yet.

If your site is www.ExampleName.com then the name you use should be Example Name. Your email should be ExampleName@gmail.com or admin@examplename.com. You should attach a gravatar to this email that is either a picture of you or your website's logo. Leave your homepage in the website field.

Now leave a real comment. Not something stupid like "your blog is pretty!" Leave a real, genuine comment. Ask a question or two. Once you've done this, make a spreadsheet. Keep note of the URL of the blog post you just commented on. Each day, go through those URL's and see if your comment is live. Once it is live, keep checking back to see if the admin or someone else has replied to you. If they have, reply back. Start a conversation.

I can't tell you how many referrals I get to my websites just from links in my blog comments. If you have something good to say, people will check you out. Including the blog owner, which can have many extra benefits.

SEX!

Got your attention, didn't I? The last point is do something to get attention. A few months ago I heard about cash mobs for the first time. I loved the idea and there wasn't already a cash mob where I live. So I figured I would start one.

I made a website for my new cash mob and set up a page on Facebook and an account on Twitter. In no time at all I had 100 likes, had been interviewed on the local radio station as well as a state-wide radio program and at our first event I was interviewed for the biggest news channel in my state. That interview aired during the Sunday night news.

That kind of attention and exposure is what drives traffic. I tripled my Facebook likes, added Twitter followers and saw a big spike in my website traffic after that. I can't tell you how to get attention in your niche, but stop being like everybody else! Do something different and unique and you'll get attention.

A House Of Bricks

Remember that third little pig? He survived because he built a house of bricks. And if anyone has ever laid brick before, you know you do it one brick at a time. Building an entire house of bricks takes time. Your panda-proof or penguin-proof website won't happen overnight. But if you just comply with Google's guidelines and then get traffic like Google doesn't exist, you'll find that all the huffing and puffing of any assortment of wild creatures won't blow you away.

1. Complying by Google's Guidelines will not guarantee you SEO traffic in any way shape or form. It help protect you from penalties, but it won't necessarily secure you top rankings either. The overwhelming majority of websites comply with Google's guidelines and don't see a drop of traffic outside of their brand names.

2. If you "get traffic like Google doesn't exist" doesn't quite work either. First, the recent Google Chrome penalty raises some really scary questions where sites can get penalized for advertising in ways that create unsolicited links. In this case, Google ran pay-for-placement video ads and the publishers decided, without incentive or request, to link to the Chrome browser page. Google penalized Chrome for this. More importantly, the majority of social media opportunities, including Wikipedia, are nofollowed.

I guess what I am saying is this. SEO is not a fairy tale. If you want to rank, especially in competitive niches, you better be willing to play hardball.

I do agree with the overall concept of this post that, from
the day one you have to build your website and linking strategy in such a way
that no Google animal can kill it, which is true to a higher extent.

But saying that Google guidelines are going to help you push
your rankings higher in search results (especially from the competitive key
phrases) then this might not be true in my opinion. Guidelines may help you
stay away from penalty but EPIC win from guidelines only are fairly not
possible.

I think you go a bit far when you suggest "get traffic as if Google doesn't exist" when, for most sites, I'm guessing 75%+ of their traffic is from search (Google+Binghoo). While much of this may be brand-oriented, search engines are the de facto portals to the internet, even more so since most browser now support searching directly from the address bar.

It's not about "doing SEO" vs. ignoring Google; it's about short vs long range planning and risk tolerance. Have a churn & burn affiliate site you want to rank for a a couple weeks? Throw a bunch of comment/directory/spun article/redirected domains at it.

Have a legitimate brand/domain you want to rank well for (hopefully) ever? You'll have a much lower risk tolerance and much longer time horizon, which leads to the type of "white hat", content-oriented, Google-approved techniques you're advocating.

Hi Dan, while I completely agree with the sentiment of this article 100%, there's one glaring factor - it simply doesn't apply whatsoever to affiliates and smaller content sites. On a related note, Google is hardcore bigoted against affiliate marketers these days, and all of the good guidelines & best industry practices on earth won't help you get your eBay Partner Network, CJ or Amazon Associates-driven product site back on page one after being de-indexed thanks to Panda & Penguin. As usual, especially on Google, it's all about backlinks, and Penguin seems to have done nothing to stop all of the garbage MFA's and keyword-stuffed 5 page .info/.name/.ws blogs with eBay links from being on page 1. This is making life miserable on webmasters who are doing the right thing, and making it be all about the content, ease of finding REAL & helpful information, and usability. Just yesterday I was cross referencing a bunch of page 1 results from some competitive keywords for coupon codes. All of page 1 was dominated by poorly written fluff text sites that had a million and one backlinks from free directories, interlinked through multiple other sites/domains that the webmaster owned with re-spun content linking to the original content. Seriously, Google?!?! Why even bother being a white hatter anymore?

A creative firm I'm consulting for is working on a project within an industry that is heavily and notoriously dominated by black hat backlink tactics. I'm guessing this is known over at Google Inc. But, once again, what is being done about it? Just after doing a sample search, I saw exactly what this firm meant - as usual, all of page 1 was dominated by squeeze pages, keyword stuffed content, poorly designed pages, etc.

That's only half of the battle - thanks to Google's new algorithmic updates, big companies with big AdWords budgets are now dominating keywords like there's no tomorrow. For instance, I'm in an industrial category where most competitors are running 15 year old websites that have un-friendly URLs, bad scripts, and look like they were untouched since Clinton was president. They're top of Google page 1 now. Why? Why do they deserve it? They do no social networking, they don't update their website, their site is nearly unusable or navigable, most of their backlinks are from their own sister sites, so why does my brand new, daily updated, socially networked, white-hatted site get bumped back 7 pages, and theirs hits page 1 #2? Just because I properly promote 3rd party eBay-listed products instead of being a classified ad site, or Amazon products rather than shipping them out from a warehouse, yet still provide a better user experience with a better variety, tutorials and information?

The big point of the matter is that Google is putting all of these measures in place to knock scum sites out of their results, and it's not working. In many cases, it is hitting honest people and screwing their livelihood - SEObook does a good job of explaining this in detail. In other events, it is becoming nearly impossible to even get a brand new site listed for any decent keyword these days, unless you are buying & materializing hardcore backlinks (after all, backlinks are king, they always were and continue to be) or have a gigantic, inexhaustible daily budget for AdWords or other expensive methods to initiate a campaign aimed at targeting mass amounts of people. All of the great, compelling and wonderful content on earth won't change that.

Just wait until Google implements paid organic (inevitable, in my opinion - especially after their recent change of heart on the topic) - we'll see this industry get turned on its head.

It seems like the only way to have a prayer at ranking is on Bing, a much less enigmatic algorithm where doing the right thing seems to still get the rankings. Unfortunately, Bing traffic is few and between, and converts poorly - at least in my industry.

I completely agree with you pixelrage. It is so frustrating when you try to do everything by the book, and then your rankings start to drop, and when you look into the backlinks from your competitors, you can see that links have blatantly been bought, articles have been spun to death and show no relevance to the company. What are we supposed to do? report every webpage?

Hi NutcrackerDesign, Yeah I agree SEO is frustration, just look up the dictionary, it's there.

Anyways, it's becoming more like marketing now. It is a good thing I suppose because behind every computer screen is a real person sitting there and they do want good content that will enhance their life somehow, rather than just getting served up with what some SEOers like us want them to have for lunch...

Maybe I'm just a sucker for an analogy, but I like this post. To me it's becoming massively important to build a diverse range of traffic sources to your website - sure, that in itself won't get you to the top of Google, but it'll make it a lot easier to cope if your site does get hit in a future algorithm update.

To stretch the metaphor - if you have no choice but to build a straw house, maybe you should also start building yourself an underground bunker for when the inevitable happens?

Using SEX to sell. Really? I thought that was old in '97, and no, you didn't get my attention, which also went out in '97.

Sorry, much of this post is a rehash of out-dated, old-school SEO tactics that went out when Google overtook Yahoo, and to suggest it's wise to do no SEO (1) puts us out of work and (2) contradicts your recommendation and link to the Webmaster Guidelines. Of course SEO is necessary. And Google is happy to tell us all how to optimize sites of any size. Though many of Google's recommendations are self-serving, they at least steer SEOs away from outright negligence, and keep sideline SEOs from making gross mistakes.

Nice post Dan and well done in highlighting the fact that if you concentrate on building a site that serves its purpose and is information rich with fresh, unique content then you are going to automatically start being noticed by search engines. As you say it is important to make sure that you follow the basic compliance but make sure your focus is on providing the user with what they want and giving them an excellent experience in doing so without purely basing your site around search engines!

Anything worth doing is worth doing well - and so will take more time and effort than any quick fix!

My favourite Google guideline? "Link to quality sites". Anyone see what they did there? It's a practise endorsed here at SEOMoz too. I've lost count now of the scraper sites I've seen that link to Wikipedia articles on every page. Way to go G getting a better idea of what's quality by tricking the SEO's into telling your bot ;)

I wish to be the third pig and no worried to obey the orders
of Google God

What happens is responding to client's questions on how long
time and expense it take to come at the top position of Google. They don’t
bother about Panda and Penguin. They need results, queries, business.

Yesterday in a client meeting, owner is saying that he is
not at all getting queries for law 2 months. He has not even paid the last
month payment yet. And I am holding the bills of House rent, Electricity bill,
water bill, internet bill, phone bill, waste management bill unpaid.

There was time when the world Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) the
largest conservation organization adopted Giant Panda as their logo. We all
felt sympathy to that endangered species.

But now when I see the picture of Panda, nothing to say.

Recently my daughter asked some doubts about Penguin as Do
penguin has feathers? I really got stunt with her question, because we fear penguins
now.

I replied Penguins do have feathers, shiny and smooth
feather. God has given feathers for keeping the water away from their skin.

Didn't understand a point why this post go 11 thumbs down , when this blog was very informative and just from the scratch . Thanks Dan for sharing the information with us. The three little pigs example made this blog post interesting as well as understandable !Thanks Shikha

I think I agree with all on this post, the author has done a
great job, in a method, but we also, with a site that has been up and running
for over 13 years and again did no SEO ........ Our hits reflected on how much
work we did on the site, The more work we did the more hits we got, we are
selling over 67'0000 products. But since Panda and Penguin this year, no matter
what we do, better page optimisation, better link generation, better social integration,
(we have built a complete community web site). has not changed our ranking, we
are throwing everything to keep our head above water, but even this does not
seem to change the playing field, White hat black hat, what ever you want to
call it does not seem to have dented google algorithm. We just have to tighten our belts
and hope we can keep out staff employed. What are your views?

I agree that you should follow Google's guidelines and act in good faith but SEO does take work that is why many companies are paying so much money every month to try and obtain rankings on Google's first page. Very good article and I totally agree you need to start with a foundation or laying bricks before you can build a house.

I think dan's article is excellent advice for those who run a site which truly offers something different.but if you are just running a site solely to make money then you wouldn't get away with adding it to a wikipedia page - I have tried!

You definitely can get a page added to Wikipedia. You first have to build a profile up before you start linking to yourself. Or get in touch with an already established editor and get them to post your updates.

We got eaten for lunch by Panda, spent nearly a year fixing whatever seemed to be the problem, saw a huge recovery in December and then have watched that recovery crumble over the past several months with a "you have unnatural links" message in GWT.

We don't buy links. We don't do comment spam. We have no idea what Google has decided is "unnatural" and yet we have obviously been penalized in some way.

Ignoring Google is not an option when Google arbitrarily changes the rules about what is good and what isn't and then won't tell you why you are now on the bad side.

I agree No SEO is best SEO. Well the kind of SEO we have taken for granted over the years anyhow. Man it seemed like only yesterday that it was really important to have lots of backlinks to your site from other sites within a similar industry, blah blah blah... Oh wait it was just yesterday. Ahhhhh! So yeah, content is the king now huh, and social connections. There's always PPC if you have enough margin in your products...

I think some of you missed the point of the post. Following guidelines will not boost your rankings. Getting alternative traffic won't necessarily boost your rankings (but almost always does). These things will keep your site safe. Try not following Google's guidelines and see what happens.

The point is after Penguin I started over. New domain, new content, totally new site. I closely examined Google's guidelines and made sure I was in complete compliance. Then I sought traffic like Google didn't exist. I've gotten decent traffic from these efforts. Better yet, I rank in the top ten on a competitive phrase after less than 2 months by ignoring all the things SEO "experts" would say I need to do to move up the rankings. I just got traffic. And then I got rankings, not by seeking rankings, but by seeking traffic.

Take that advice for what its worth. Keep trying to "play hardball" or worry about how to get links to an affiliate site. In the meantime, I'm getting more traffic than I ever have by ignoring off-site SEO and just going for traffic any way I can. Good luck with your methods, mine are working just fine.